Altruistic World Online Library

Identified as a trouble maker by the authorities since childhood, and resolved to live up to the description, Charles Carreon soon discovered that mischief is most effectively fomented through speech. Having mastered the art of flinging verbal pipe-bombs and molotov cocktails at an early age, he refined his skills by writing legal briefs and journalistic exposes, while developing a poetic style that meandered from the lyrical to the political. Journey with him into the dark caves of the human experience, illuminated by the torch of an outraged sense of injustice.

Well tune up the exit chorus, Karl Rove is leaving the White House, having cleansed it of every last piece of the damning evidence that once littered the place. The fixer has done his job, and now, the media is parroting, Karl Rove is going to spend more time with “his family.” Rove's cover story is that he is withdrawing from active politics. He will be spending time tending apple trees. You are thinking, like I am, this seems a very different type of Karl Rove than the one we know — who is not know for taking a back seat in anything involving his sphere of concern.

Flying Ahead of The Storm

Then there is the small matter of the subpoena from Congress over the US Attorney-gate scandal. The storm has arrived on his doorstep. He can barely be said to be leaving ahead of it, and some might say it's suspicious, his withdrawing from the President’s side just as the all-but toothless Congress masses its courage for a pitiful attempt to gum Bush to death. A cowardly charge, Karl would admit, by cowardly people, but a charge nonetheless. Rove is sure he will prevail, but the rest of us would not be too surprised to discover that Rove had just begun the last political battle of his life.

A Strategic Retreat

Rove wants all his time to strategize and plan. He will assert maximum control over his records, and will be better able to resist disclosing evidence of White House involvement in the now widely-condemned plot to purge US Attorneys from their positions in preparation for rigging the vote in various states. US Attorneys were fired who refused to pursue phoney “voter fraud” cases — a code-word for suppressing the vote among minority and lower-income voters by threatening prosecution. Republicans have used this tactic to discourage minority voting for years, being great fans of anything that keeps ordinary people from participating in the political life of the nation where they live and pay taxes.

Return to Oz

Karl has been successful in part because he tries not to lie when he might get caught. Remember he remained upright where Scooter Libby fell - he knows where to draw the line. So maybe he was being secretly candid when he announced his destination, and meant he was going to spend time with “The Family.” It’s a fine old Family he’s part of, the kind that is run by deep thinkers like him, who need time to think and strategize, especially when their strength is on the wane. So now it’s back behind the curtain with him, where he can pull the levers of power in secret. It’s another fine day in the Land of Oz.

Hello, Americans. Are you worried about the way our country’s being run lately? Do you get the feeling that corporate interests control everything, and the little person has no say? Are you afraid that both parties have sold out to the lobbyists? Are you sure that the noise about Britney hides something worse than a failing economy, a failed war, and a collapsing infrastructure?

If so, I think it’s time for us to discuss the Protect America Act. This Protect America Act is the largest legislative cowflop I have ever seen, and if the secret jockeying around its enactment and re-enactment are any indication, it is a central part of The Bush Amnesty Package.

The Protect America Act, enacted on August 1, 2007, was born with one of the shortest lifespans ever set on federal law – it was good for only six months, and thus was set to expire on February 1st, three days ago. This Protect America Act is so important to the president that on January 25th he said he’d use his veto to kill it if the Congress renewed it for a mere thirty days. He wants it made permanent, so America will be permanently protected. But just six days later, the Great Decider decided differently, and sat down in Las Vegas to sign a fifteen-day extension of the Act that Congress had quietly slipped through both the House and the Senate without telling any of their constituents.

Now let’s discuss what the Protect America Act is, and why I think it’s really the Bush Amnesty Bill. Most average people haven't paid too much attention to the NSA, that's the National Security Agency — the same NSA that Oliver North used as a cover for dealing cocaine and weapons on behalf of the Nicaraguan fascists we called “contras.” They don't think much about it, because it acts in secret. Sometimes, apparently even before September 11, 2001, the NSA secretly went to AT&T and Verizon and a bunch of other telecommunications companies, the “telcos,” as they're known, and got them to agree to let the NSA tap the telephones and read the email of American citizens. Some evidence has been revealed by an AT&T whistleblower, who says AT&T shared 100% of its customer information and communications with the NSA. That, in case you don't know it, violates the warrant requirement of the 4th Amendment, the one that keeps our “persons, houses, papers and effects” safe from warrantless searches.

There's a special court that the Bush NSA could have asked to issue those warrants. It's called the “FISA court,” that stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it always issues warrants for wiretaps when requested. FISA proceedings are secret, and have been used to bug the phones of mobsters and narcotrafficers very effectively for years. Not good enough for the Bush NSA. They don't want to respect any law. They just went to AT&T and Verizon and said, “Who's your Daddy?” And the telcos just gave it up for poppa. This is what we call the “domestic spying scandal.”

There's about 50 lawsuits pending against AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos for selling out their customers in this way. I, personally, have already called AT&T and asked for my money back for all the time they let the NSA invade my privacy. I told the AT&T lady that, if I'd checked into a hotel and discovered my room had two-way mirrors, I'd certainly want a refund, and sue for invasion of privacy, too. Makes sense, doesn't it?

But the issue runs far deeper than the simple right to be free from having your privacy invaded, which can be personally humiliating. The point is that the government, especially, must not invade our privacy, because whenever it does, it has run off the rails, and is doing something the Founding Fathers never intended to permit, and erected the Fourth Amendment as a barrier against – the King’s ruthless methods of putting down supposed plots against “the Crown” by imprisoning people without charges, reading their letters, and interrogating their friends and family. The 4th Amendment is so precious to the American legal tradition that we let criminals, even murderers, out of jail because the evidence against them was seized without warrants. The current Supreme Court hasn’t changed that. In courts across America, every day judges let drug dealers walk without batting an eye when a narc makes a bust with evidence seized in violation of the dealer’s privacy.

Nevertheless, reading our emails and listening to our phone calls was such a priority for the Bush gang that they just blithely committed a federal felony. There is no reason to believe they’ve stopped reading our email, or that their focus is on bomb-wielding terrorists. They know their real enemies are votes, not bombs. Don’t forget what we learned in the Attorney-Gate scandal. While the NSA was illegally wiretapping Americans, Alberto Gonzales’ Department of Justice was filling the US Attorney ranks with loyalists who would help local vote-rigging by three methods: prosecuting Democratic candidates to slander them, challenging minority voters with identification requirements, and not prosecuting Republican vote-riggers. So how sure can you be that Republic dirty tricks operatives haven’t already used this information to undermine our electoral process?

The domestic spying scandal really is bad news for Bush, which is why he’s doing deals in Vegas. He and his spy-chiefs could end up answering charges for conducting illegal wiretaps, the sort of charges currently pending against Anthony Pellicano, the private investigator to the stars, who made illegal wiretaps one of his prime offerings. Of course, these prosecutions would be under Federal statute, 50 USC § 1809, the FISA section that provides for 5 years in jail if a government employee “intentionally engages in electronic surveillance ... except as authorized by statute.” While it's ”a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction,“ that wouldn't give Bushco much comfort, would it, since this is all about warrantless surveillance. But more than likely, as is ever the case, the Bush gangsters would probably go down for obstruction of justice and perjury for trying to cover it all up. These prosecutions could sweep in Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Myers, Dick Cheney, maybe even El Busho himself. Not a matter to be dealt with lightly.

You can hear Dick Cheney thinking — and he knows something about avoiding prosecution, having dodged a bullet with that Scooter Libby case, and letting Harry Whittington take the blame for getting in the way of his birdshot in that little hunting snafu down in Texas. This is not something you can trust the federal judiciary on. Even Justice Roberts, Thomas, and Alito might not save your ass, once you were out of office. They're on the bench for life, and have short memories. No, better go to our pet Congress, and get immunity for the telcos. That'll keep us safe, because if you can't sue the telcos, you're not going to ever be able to pry through NSA secrecy to find out whose ear was actually glued to the receiver while all Americans chatted on gaily, oblivious to the fact that Big Daddy Knows All.

When this was first discovered by the press in December 2005, Congress pretended to really care. But they got buffaloed by the White House into back-door approving the program by way of the Protect America Act, which really should've been called ”Protect The Administration Act.” Sponsored by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, this injects weasel words into the clear language of FISA, allowing warrantless surveillance against anyone, get this — “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.” That means that as long as the Protect America Act is in effect, FISA is gutted, because if one party to the conversation is “reasonably believed” to be outside the United States, the entire communication can be tapped without a warrant. With servers swapping emails all over the world, and IP addresses the only clue as to their real origin, a case could be made that any email might reasonably be, on one end, coming from outside the US. And does the fact that you receive spam from Nigeria open your whole inbox to surveillance? If so, and why not, then privacy is toast! For an extra dose of irony, consider the fact that Congressmen have communications with foreign-based people every day – communications that they have authorized the Bush NSA to read willy-nilly. Well, I guess that’s what happens when Congress doesn’t have time to read the legislation, or consider its effects.

Are the Democrats naïve? It hardly matters, for if so they were criminally negligent. The Republicans broke the law as it existed, but Congress violated the Constitution when it enacted the Protect America Act. These “representatives” may as well have spilled the blood of the Founders of this nation and spit on the Constitution. They have let the wolf of tyranny in the door and watched it eat the babe of liberty. I guess that’s why they only did it for six months. That salved their jaded consciences some.

You may recall a little dust-up in Congress over the passage of this Benedict Arnold legislation, enough to get it enacted “temporarily,” good for only 180 days from the effective date of August 1, 2007. That meant it was due to lapse on February 1, 2008. Good enough that Cheney, and all the other Bush gang members, slept well through the holidays. And to avoid disturbing that sleep, it's all been hush-hush since then. You didn't exactly hear Rupert Murdoch breaking the news that the Protect America Act was about to expire. The Republicans certainly haven't gone to the electorate to plead their case for the extension of this rule. Sure, it's a little hard to understand the legalese, but for heavens sakes, The Protect America Act was about to expire! Terrorists around the world are licking their chops, ready to send emails stuffed with terrorist plans that no-one will even be able to read! Presumably terrorists are holding their breath, just waiting to see us drop our guard.

And yet, you didn’t hear a word. Although this law is so important that on January 25th Bush threatened to veto a thirty-day version, demanding a permanent extension, he didn’t even mention it once during his State of the Union Address four days later, on January 29th. I suspect that on the 25th, Bush was playing chicken with Reid, threatening to launch invective at the Democrats in his State of the Union address for refusing to make Protect America Act permanent. Bush apparently decided against that, because during the Address, he talked a lot about protecting America, without once referring to the Act itself.

It had been allowed to vanish from the public radar screen. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about when the Protect America Act was going to expire. The New York Times had done nothing to disturb my ignorance. February 1st was Friday. I was drinking coffee at Starbucks as usual, and there isn’t an article in The Times about this relatively important topic. But someone screwed up, because on page A12 of the New York Times, I stumbled over a statement in an article entitled “Senate Democrats' Stimulus Plan Hits Roadblock,” and it said, referring to Harry Reid, Democratic Senate Majority Whip:

Mr. Reid said late Thursday that he had reached agreement with Mr. McConnell on amendments related to the proposed permanent extension of the administration's terrorism surveillance program. Republican leaders had viewed the agreement as a condition for moving the stimulus bill to the floor.

That alarmed me. Every time Harry Reid makes a deal with the devil, I mean the White House, the people end up on the losing end. So I did what every red blooded American blogger can do, and called up Reid's office. They all said they didn't know about it, and had no response. I called Obama's office, following up a lead that he'd skipped a vote on the issue, and they admitted that he had, but also claimed he'd been present on Monday, January 28th, and voted against domestic spying. So I looked up what his vote was, and it wasn't against anything. It was FOR extending the authorization by another 30 days. All the Democratic Senators voted the same way. It seems as if the one thing the Democrats have no stomach for is fighting TODAY. Kick the can down the road until the issue is forgotten, and it can be compromised away without a fight.

Although she's the head traitor in the House, and not a Senator, I figured Nancy Pelosi would have the straight dope, but her people don't even answer the phone. I talked to staff in Clinton's office, Kennedy's office, Max Baucus' office, and many others. They all denied knowing what I was talking about. I called one of the good guys on the issue — Sen. Christopher Dodd, who keeps introducing legislation to kill the immunity deal, but his people knew nothing. Of course I couldn't learn anything from the bad guy, JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who’s pushing hard for permanent adoption of Protect America, and immunity for telcos. Stop me there — a Rockefeller from West Virginia? I thought Rockefellers were New Yorkers. Well, obviously he's not the child of any coal miner's daughter. At any rate, he's the “Democrat” who's really behind all this. Some kinda Democrats they make down in West Virginia. Would somebody go out to West Virginia and yell down a coal mine — “Hey folks — the boss is tappin' yer phone!” But Harry Reid's from Nevada, where you learn to watch your back, so he's a little more careful when he sells out. That must be why none of the Senate press offices could even tell me that the Protect America Act had been extended by fifteen days the very day before. That, and the fact that the President happened to be in Las Vegas when he signed this legislation, which is kind of strange. Doesn’t he usually sign bills in the Oval Office?

Can it be the case that, while all the Washington Senatorial press offices basked in blissful ignorance, Bush just happened to be in Nevada, Harry Reid’s home state – to sign a 15-day extension of the Protect America Act, an extension half as long as one he’d declared unacceptable just a week prior? I mean, I know Harry Reid’s constituency is all based there, but what, did some showgirls hold the president hostage and make him sign? Even weirder, since when do we extend statutes suspending the constitutional requirement of a warrant for a period of two weeks? What the hell is going on here?

I’ll tell you what’s going on. This fifteen-day extension shows the President and his cronies are dealing very seriously on this issue. They know they could go to jail, and give the whole witch-hunt-for-terrorists business a bad name. Everything could unravel around this one. Meanwhile, the Democrats are helping to keep the fire damped down over this domestic spying thing, supposedly to come out of this Congressional session with a few extra bucks for groceries and rent for regular folks. Remember, everyone’s been quoting that Clinton-era saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” So in a deal that some might call cynical, Reid is getting a few bucks for regular folks in exchange for cutting the Bush gang loose for their crimes against our constitution, our privacy, our dignity as Americans.

It is often said that justice delayed is justice denied. Certainly it’s the purpose of the Bush gang to deny Americans the justice that should be served on them, and delay is their method. Harry Reid is ready to give them all the delay they need. The deal he referred to having reached is contained in Senate Bill 2557, that Reid introduced on January 28th. It would extend the Protect America Act four months, until “July 1, 2009.” Hell of a lot better than 15 days. In fact, you could divide the dollars directed to poor people by the stimulus package by 120, the number of days by which Senate Bill 2557 will extend the Protect America Act, and determine just how much it cost the Republicans to buy each day of delay. But it will be worth every penny. Warrantless surveillance will remain the law of the land well into the summer, by which time the nation will be wrapped up in presidential campaign fever, and the last Bush holdouts will be deploying their parachutes. The Bush gang is betting that Congress will be less willing to confront the issue four months from now. Meanwhile, they will enjoy the power to violate our privacy in ways we don’t even understand.

The Democrats know what they’re doing, but as usual, they’ve got an outdated strategy. It was the economy, stupid, but it’s gone way beyond that. It’s about having government we can trust, from the Congress to the President to the Supreme Court. Right now, we have none of it. We have a president who lies, a Congress that runs in fear from the word “terror,” and a Supreme Court that worships government and reduces the individual to a pawn. Congress is afraid to reveal the depth of the traitorous conduct that they have let the Bush regime perpetrate. That’s why they enacted the Protect America Act in the first place – to give Bush the cover he needs to get out of office without being impeached, and to retire in safety, without being indicted.

The media disinformation campaign is going great. The gutting of the 4th Amendment has gone all but unnoticed. Good liberals like me think that the point is whether the telcos will get amnesty, overlooking the fact that the Protect America Act itself is the elephant in the room. I started out from that viewpoint when I began researching this report, and ended up deciding that the whole “amnesty for telcos” issue is a sidetrack. Sure, the telco lawsuits are the most likely avenue for an investigation that would lead to discovering who, in the Bush gang, put all this stuff in motion. But only idiots with media credentials really ask themselves, “who authorized this?” That’s like asking if Reagan authorized North to supply the Contras with weapons in defiance of a law making it strictly illegal to provide that assistance. Of course Reagan authorized it – that’s why North did it. And of course Bush authorized domestic spying – that’s why he’s willing to stretch his immunity deal out for fifteen days.

Realizing that the worms that would come out of this domestic spying garbage can, if it were opened, would be large enough to eat all of Washington DC, the two houses of Congress are as ready as two mutts in an alley to do the deed. Eventually, they’ll grant the telcos immunity from lawsuits, because that’s all the Republicans will need to keep the lid on the scandal. But are they so messed up that they might permanently adopt the Protect America Act? It’s one thing to let the Bush gang go free when they deserve to swing on the end of a rope. It’s quite another to burn the 4th Amendment right out of the Constitution for the rest of the life of our nation.

Here’s what I think – anytime somebody is bargaining in the area of fifteen days, they’re weak. And when Bush cuts his demands from vetoing a 30-day deal to signing a 15-day deal, there has got to be some invisible sweetener – an unspoken quid pro quo, something more than the mere four month extension bill that Reid is proposing. Something that, in essence, is granting Bush and his affiliated criminals amnesty for running America into the ground, ruining our economy, our national pride, our ability to stand together as Americans proud to be Americans. It all turns round this Protect America Act, I’m sure. Call Harry Reid now at 202-224-3502, and tell him you heard about the secret deals in Vegas. Tell him to ditch his amnesty plans for Bush, let the Protect America Act expire, and save our Constitution.

Punks are by nature contrarian, so it stands to reason that I would be bored to the bone in the middle of an election season that is supposedly a standing-room only attraction. Can't help it. The Obamajama is making history, and is reputed to be hella charismatic, but I'm just not picking up on the magic. I must have a bit of the skepticism that infects the aged, who have been bilked out of their lunch money so many times it's become second nature to expect it. The more politicians say they have the best interests of all at heart, while promising to mightily smite our foes here and abroad, the more I can see the forked tongue darting between their lips.

The things that have poisoned politics are:

The requirement that politicians be pious

The requirement that politicians never offend anyone

The ban on criticising "the military"

The veneration of past "leaders," such as FDR, Truman, Reagan, etc.

Politicians are by nature foul mouthed, hot headed, and lustful. To require that they be pious corrupts them with a vice far more dangerous to a democracy -- hypocrisy.

Politicians should be exceptionally free to offend corporations, banks, military officers, and any damn one else who gets in the way of doing the business of the people. As voters, we need aggressive politicians, on our behalf, not namby pamby bootlickers and swine suckers.

The military is not a sacred institution, even though its members spill their own blood and that of others in pursuit of their mission. Badly-planned military missions that cause the loss of human life need to be criticised and aborted. The loss of military discipline that results in torture, abuse, and murder requires the strictest censure. Che Guevara was quickest to execute those purported "revolutionaries" who used battle as an excuse for gangsterism and brutality.

Past leaders are no more deserving of veneration than our current ones. Elevating these past representatives as great "leaders" leads to a cult of personality that the media can endlessly exploit in Hitleresque fashion. Screw leaders. We need REPRESENTATIVES.

Well, the Decider has decided to keep all our options on the table, and I for one have no problem with it. Waterboarding is, by all accounts, nothing more than scary, and that could be said of roller coasters. Frankly, I'd confess to just about anything to avoid being put through a second trip on one of these seriously scary "thrill rides" that people call fun. The people who design those rides are sadists, and the people who pay to ride them are masochists. I say build a roller coaster in Gitmo and when they refuse to confess, just put 'em through the loop de loop one more time. You'll have them accusing their grandmothers of being infidels before another day goes by.

On the other hand, we have hard cases. Take Ben Bernanke for example. He just can't give it to us straight. He leaks out the bad news like a used-up adult diaper. No, we aren't in a recession -- the economy just has no points of strength. There is no core inflation, everything just costs more. The Federal Reserve Bank keeps dropping the rates to "fuel the economy," but most people's credit card rates are firmly stuck to the ceiling, while banks can't find anybody credit-worthy enough to deserve a loan. Student lenders are getting out of the business because they just can't depend on the government to send them hundreds of millions in un-needed subsidies any more.

I say sterner measures are required. Put Bernanke on the board, and I don't mean the board of directors. Strap him to a board, put a towel over his face and start pouring. He will merely experience a sensation like drowning, and will be none the worse for wear. Then we'll tilt him up, let him get a gasp of air and demand some straight answers: Where did all the money go? Is it in Iraq? Did giving away pallet-loads of hundred dollar bills in Baghdad have a negative effect on the economy? Could the daily cost of the war possibly be part of our economic bad news? Is the dollar going to plummet right down to the depths of hell?

You've got to admit these are important questions, to which we need the answers. Waterboarding has to be used in those situations where, if we don't get the answers, thousands of people will die. Well, I think we should use it when millions of people are about to go broke. Some of them, after all, will inevitably go postal and shoot their colleagues, fellow-students, and teachers. All because we couldn't get a straight story from Ben, and our Treasury officials were too squeamish to resort to lawful techniques that our Commander in Chief has preserved for their use. Maybe they're holding back because Bernanke hasn't been declared a terrorist or an enemy combatant, in which case, that's one more reason to broaden the definition of terrorism. 'Cause this economy has me scared sh*tless.

Okay, let's see here ... I woke up on Friday to complete a huge writing project, bleary from working too late the night before and reeling from the flu, and what do I hear? The Federal Reserve Bank is making a loan to Morgan Stanley so it can make a loan to Bear Stearns, and the Fed is taking as collateral -- you guessed it -- mortgage backed securities. The reason? Because Bear was plumb outta cash. As in -- all the billions are gone.

Now that's no problem for a Decider -- you just write another check! Which is what Ben Bernanke, Bush's master of financial prestidigitation, did. Now, no one was screaming from the high heavens that this was a bailout, and in fact the Decider himself was down at The Economic Club in New York City himself that very day, telling people we didn't want to get all excited and have a bailout, and there was one going on that very moment.

Maybe you're confused -- isn't the government supposed to bail out banks? Yes, banks that paid insurance into the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund -- they pay their insurance, and their deposits are covered. But Bear Stearns is not a bank, it's an investment bank (big difference), and it doesn't pay insurance premiums, and it had no claim upon the public purse that entitled it to be bailed out. It was kind of a huge favor that Bernanke was doing. But of course the Fed isn't supposed to do favors, it's supposed to carry out monetary policy.

So why did Bernanke authorize this outpouring of generosity? So Bear Stearns owners wouldn't go broke? So Bear executives wouldn't leap from their office windows? Well, that's not what he's saying. The reason is -- because otherwise we would have a financial meltdown in this country, and Bush would probably become about as popular as Mussolini after Italy lost the second world war. Which is not why Bush hired him.

I was then moved to create a list with references to the Bill of Rights, a source of some pretty “hard core liberties,” and an indicator of who has been doing the winning while the American people took care of the losing:

First Amendment Losses: Power to the Media Poodles!

While it was a big First Amendment loss when the big cities began confining anti-administration protesters to “free speech zones” where marchers could curb their enthusiasm, our greatest First Amendment loss was when we discovered that the media, that enjoys freedom to print almost anything, was content to regurgitate the paranoid rantings of neocons who urged us to revenge ourselves on the poor people of Iraq for harms committed by persons still unknown, but certainly not Iraqi. As the media fed war fever, we found an end to our post-Enron depression, and discovered as every generation seems to, that there’s something about a man in uniform. And once again, for the ten-thousandth time, Johnny and this time Jane as well, marched off to make the world safe for democracy. Four-thousand families have lost their children forever, and many times that number of soldiers have returned to their homes and home towns having lost their rights to see with two eyes, to run with two good legs, to speak through an unscarred face, and to think with a mind free of painful thoughts of regret and terror. These are some hard core rights to lose.

Second Amendment Gains: Power to Munitions-Makers!

Sticking with the Bill of Rights as a border for our discussion, I’ll concede the Second Amendment, because gun owners are about as happy as pigs in their own waste these days, notwithstanding the bumper crop of school shootings, and nowadays every politician wants to be in favor of gun-toting. We suspect that allowing Dick Cheney to get away scot-free with a negligent, likely drunken shooting of Dick Whittington, the Texas Funeral Commissioner, tends to encourage lawless behavior of that sort. The tendency of police officers in New York to release a hail of bullets in the direction of any suspect deemed to be so dark that they are always in the process of reaching for a gun, and the increasing number of gun-related crimes by Iraq veterans all suggest that in our new, openly armed society, owning a Kalashnikov, AK-47 or Uzi may in fact be good sense.

Fourth Amendment Losses: Power to the Snoops & Spies!

Let’s check in on the Fourth Amendment, that guarantees our right to privacy. It used to guarantee some pretty hard core rights, but it took a big hit when the managers of our cell phone and Internet providers decided that committing crimes in the name of national security was a safe bet, and opened our emails to view and our phone conversations to eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. Bush’s push to grant telcoms immunity leaves no question that crimes were committed by the government and the telcoms, since there’s no need to seek immunity for something that isn't at risk of being prosecuted. The Fourth Amendment has about been nullified in many cases by the FBI’s routine abuse of National Security Letters to compile dossiers on loyal Americans, a widespread invasion of privacy without precedent or justification.

We have also lost our Fourth Amendment right not to be subjected to unlawful arrest and secret detention. Thanks to the PATRIOT Act, in all its unread and dangerous bulk, people actually are kidnapped by government black ops squads, and they’re not all Middle Easterners and people of color. A good example of how even white people can have their lives turned inside out by the terrorism-finders is the little-reported case of Brandon Mayfield, the Portland, Oregon attorney who got a settlement of $2 Million after the FBI whisked him into secret confinement and tried to finger him as a conspirator in the March 11 Madrid train bombing. (Mayfield had never been to Madrid). Mayfield's sin? He married a Muslim, and then became one. Another American Muslim, Jose Padilla, who was confined for years at Guantanamo on the grounds he planned to explode a “dirty bomb” inside the nation, was designated an enemy combatant by the president, who imprisoned him, subjected him to sensory deprivation and solitary confinement for years, then ran him through a federal court trial in Florida where he was convicted of a thought-crime of training and thinking jihadically. The Statements Padilla made while being illegally deprived of an attorney and subjected to years of deprivation and coercion were used against him at trial, while the disappearance of the government’s dirty bomb story was the untold story of the trial. I would definitely say that when our federal courts are being used to functionally ignore the rights of the “enemy combatants,” dealing with every appeal so slowly that any real judicial oversight over the lives of hundreds of people currently imprisoned for an indefinite term, we have definitely lost some “hardcore rights.”

While it is true that Japanese Americans suffered a more expansive race-based insult from our nation when they were interned in rural camps for the duration of World War Two, the current degrading of human rights is intended to subject us all to lowered standards, from sea to shining sea. We Americans are all, in a way, “Good Germans” tolerating the totalitarian warm-up of a junta that has taken over the White House and has not yet given up the dream of absolute power over its citizens. We all hope it won't happen to us, but the official policy, and one that has been used against many unfortunates, is that with the right set of lies on a sworn affidavit, any human being can be put into a forgotten place even less subject to humane oversight than Guantanamo.

Fifth Amendment Losses: Power to the Torturers!

We have lost many rights under the Fifth Amendment, such as the right to an attorney if you are charged with terrorism, and the right not to be compelled to provide testimony against yourself. We are all imperiled by laws immunizing interrogators from criminal liability for torture or whatever dumbed-down term you want to impose on it. This officially pursued and officially denied pro-torture policy might make some people wonder why Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, and their pet intellectual monster, John Yoo, would want the right to torture, seek immunity for war crimes, and set out to destroy the Geneva Convention? This is a “sovereign power” that even FDR didn’t ask for, that Churchill didn’t want, that Stalin of course took and without apologies, but then, our president is not supposed to emulate a totalitarian murderer.

The neocon argument that this has been “a war against a new type of enemy” is utter nonsense, a militaristic misrepresentation of the highest order. Bush needs to torture in this day and age because without torture, he would have no evidence that there is any type of terrorist threat to justify his gigantic power grab. Sure, the dramatic Collapse of the Three WTC Towers (1, 2 and 7) got people riled up for a while, but when no one besides a single lone madman ever is tried for the crime, and apparently the bin Laden family has brokered an immunity deal for Osama, then ultimately the Bush junta would like to seal its claim that “Al Qaeda” destroyed three buildings in New York in one day with some convictions. So the nation’s brave interrogators confine people like Osama’s chauffeurs and butlers, interrogating them, torturing them, and extracting false evidence. Just as in the cases of the witches who confessed to the Jesuit Inquisitors hundreds of years ago, it is all false evidence, but necessary. Just as the Holy Inquisition fed itself, confiscating properties and lives for profit, and using false confessions extracted under torment as counterfeit evidence to procure false judgments of guilt against the innocent. So yes, when that sort of thing happens, and we pay for it with endless tax dollars, I’d say we’ve lost some rights.

Fourteenth Amendment Losses: Power to The Unhuman

The Fourteenth Amendment, that guarantees all “persons” the right to receive “due process of law” before being deprived of life, liberty or property, has been snuffed out for many unfortunate people. But flesh and blood people are barely persons to government officials and elected representatives, because flesh and blood people hardly contribute at all to political campaigns, and have no tasty consulting contracts and perks to hand out. Government officials today know that caring about people marks you as a fool, while having a soft spot for corporations will open doors to power. The Fourteenth Amendment gives a powerful, virtually eternal, and financially enormous identity to un-human corporations, that are encouraged to devour our environment in exchange for a trickle of jobs, and for whom all manner of excuses are made when they corrupt our government, export our jobs, steal our money, and use offshore shells to avoid paying taxes. By making the Fourteenth Amendment useful primarily to these unhumans, we have trampled on our very identity as citizens while making obeisance to the corporate masters.

Fifteenth Amendment Losses: Power to the Vote-Riggers!

Black people and other minorities have lost the right to vote, granted to them under the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Voting Rights Act, as laws interfering with voting have been adopted under the guise of “national security” and high-tech ID schemes. We have lost the power to control our nation through the ballot box, as two presidential elections have been decided under a shadow of controversy that causes many people to claim that Jeb Bush, Katharine Harris, and the Supreme Court chose Bush to rule the first time, and the second time, it was Harry Blackwell, the Secretary of State of Ohio, who cast the deciding vote. Schemes to make the vote more secure have only resulted in wasting lots of money on paperless systems that many states are choosing not to use after having blown all the federal money on the equivalent of electronic game machines that can be hacked, flipped, and anything but reliably tracked.

That the current administration fears voters more than terrorists is clear from their domestic agenda. While many have heard that Alberto Gonzales was run out of office for lying too many times about why he fired eight United States Attorneys in a political purge, few have understood why he fired them. He fired them because he wanted to install Federal prosecutors who would help the Republicans to steal the next election in their jurisdiction. How would they do that? By prosecuting Democratic candidates to defame them in the eyes of the voters, by using phony “voting fraud” prosecutions to keep easily intimidated voters from even trying to vote, and by never prosecuting Republican operatives for actual vote rigging, campaign finance violations, and the usual dirty tricks fomented by Karl Rove and his dirty-tricksters.

The Imperial Presidency: Power to the Powerful!

Since the president was twice elected without true popular support, he knows he owes his powerful position to his powerful friends. Thus, he ignores the voters and does what he is told, which is, right now, to veto anything Dick Cheney tells him to, and simply to bar the door against any impulse to alter the course of the ship of state, currently on course to spill many, many billions of dollars of stolen taxpayer loot on all the right sort of people. The president, comfortable with being out of the country pretty much full-time, now wanders the world flinging self-congratulatory rhetoric into the faces of world leaders who know he is a failed, pathetic ignoramus whose feeble-mindedness makes intelligent people want to retch. Congress cannot even find the “off switch” that would bring our rogue president to heel. He veils his ignoring act with the claim, often voiced by his dark alter ego, Dick Cheney, that when public opinion turns against one, that is a time to stick with principle. Change the spelling of the word to “P-R-I-N-C-I-P-A-L” and I would have to agree with that characterization. Most would agree having a president answerable, or at least heedful, of the people’s voice, is a fairly hard core right. But we know that the president is answerable only to Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and his mom, none of whom have the least concern for the health of our nation.

Our representatives, their ethics mined out by ceaseless lobbying efforts and floods of corporate money, fearful of the verbal scourges of right wing pundits, devoted themselves for years almost exclusively to displays of patriotism, gave a foolish “Commander in Chief” the power to launch a pre-emptive war based on concocted evidence to justify attacking an oil rich nation that had not engaged us in any hostilities. Then they sat silent while the Decider abrogated the Geneva Conventions with pro-torture policies supported by spurious legal justifications, and accelerated the delivery of torture subjects to foreign nations for “interrogation.” They voted billions upon billions of dollars to continue the war even after the 2004 elections should have given them a mandate to end it.

Governmental Secrecy: Power to Those Who Need to Know!

The saddest part of the destruction of our hard core rights is that we don’t even have the full tally of our losses. The truth is said to be the first casualty in war, and it certainly was with the war on terror. Secrecy protects corruption, and corruption has been the plan at every stage since the Bush opportunists began exploiting the nation’s trauma and the world’s sympathy in the way of 9/11. We have become utterly used to the classification of documents for reasons having no justification in national security, and do not expect administration officials to respond honestly to questions or produce documents to Congress. Government contracting, hidden under veils of wartime secrecy, conceal nothing but oceans of graft. In Iraq, Billions of dollars have simply gone missing, literally, carted away with forklifts in the Baghdad airport, where the US plan for controlling the Iraqis has all been implemented through bribery and threats.

The New Financial Order: Power to the Super-Rich!

In talking about Iraq, lots of people these days talk about “blood and treasure.” Cut the Bogart language and let’s be real. We have no treasure. We have lost control of our Treasury, with rampant looting by government contractors being the signature crime of opportunity of a two-term administration that has bathed in corruption. Now, as the Federal Reserve Bank takes over control of our economy, deciding in one big stroke after the next just how high we're going to charge up the credit cards, all financially minded people are watching in awe as our financial edifice is stripped, as the dollar plunges in value, and the price of oil flees in the opposite direction, as interest rates spiral toward zero for the rich and up and out of sight for the poor, whose payday loans make any payday in this economy a faraway day indeed. So if you’re a pragmatic person, and you consider it a “hardcore right” to be able to eat dinner in your own kitchen, and not under a bridge, or in a car in the parking lot of a WalMart, then yeah, we lost a lot of those, too.

I finally got something I've been waiting for a long time — an email from somebody trying to get John Yoo fired from his post as a professor at Boalt Hall, the highly prestigious Berkeley School of Law, operated with California State Funds. That's him in the picture above, the baby face declaiming that being put in the stocks is not torture. By his definition, it certainly wouldn't be, as long as they took you out of them before you died. But let's give credit where credit is due. According to John Yoo, even if something is torture, it's still okay! Check out this chilling little extract from his recently-revealed spine-chilling Torture Memo:

“Self-defense is a common-law defense to federal criminal offenses, and nothing in the text, structure or history of [the Federal Torture Statute] precludes its application to a charge of torture ... If hurting him is the only means to prevent the death or injury of others put at risk by his actions, such torture should be permissible ...”

Well, thanks to Steve Fox of Democracy In Action for getting this needed ball rolling. It didn't take long to hammer out a quick hate note, and here's a copy of it.

As a proud graduate of UCLA Law School, and a supporting alumni of my old UC school, I have been shocked at the fact that the faculty of Boalt School of Law is sheltering a war criminal, John Yoo. Even if Mr. Yoo were not the architect of a doctrine that sought to legalize the violation of human rights and immunize war criminals from prosecution, he would still be a terrible legal scholar. His writing, if emulated by young lawyers, will likely get them in hot water with judges wherever they go. Mr. Yoo ignores contrary precedent, trades in fallacious reasoning, and clips together holdings in a way that no judge would tolerate. He was only able to sell this stuff as work product because his bosses were looking for an intellect so lacking in self-respect that it would stoop to any level to provide support for a legal position that is insupportable.

I could go on, but why? No doubt you have many other emails like this one to read before you sign Mr. Yoo's pink slip. Best get on with it.

I posted yesterday about the campaign to fire John Yoo from Boalt Hall, the UC Berkeley Law School that has given sanctuary to this international criminal. After receiving 7,000 emails, finally Christopher Edley, Dean of the Law School wrote a response defending his decision not to fire Yoo, claiming that it was a matter of “academic freedom,” and that, applying the school tenure policy, Yoo hadn't been shown to have committed any “professional misconduct” as a government lawyer that was “material” to his work as a law school professor. This, my legal and lay friends, is pure poppycock! Here's my response, and below it, the Dean's apologia pro tortura.

Dear Dean Edley:

I have read your response to the public outcry against the continued employment of John Yoo, and find it wholly unconvincing. You define the scope of Mr. Yoo's activity all too understandingly.

If Mr. Yoo had written torture memos for the Gotti Family enforcers, teaching them how to inflict pain greater than kneecapping that inflicted no visible injuries, in order to extort payment for unlawful debts, would that be “clear professional misconduct?”

Suppose Mr. Yoo had written a manual for drug couriers, teaching them how to specifically carry just under the amounts of drugs that trigger mandatory minimums in the sentencing rules, would that be “clear professional misconduct?”

You did not cite even one Rule of Professional Conduct in your analysis. California Rule of Professional Conduct has Rule 3-200, entitled “Prohibited Objectives of Employment,” that reads like this:

Rule 3-200. Prohibited Objectives of Employment

A member shall not seek, accept, or continue employment if the member knows or should know that the objective of such employment is:

(A) To bring an action, conduct a defense, assert a position in litigation, or take an appeal, without probable cause and for the purpose of harassing or maliciously injuring any person; or

(B) To present a claim or defense in litigation that is not warranted under existing law, unless it can be supported by a good faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of such existing law.

The objective of Mr. Yoo’s employment was to aid terrorism hunters and prosecutors to extort evidence from people using torture, without any finding of probable cause that they had committed any crime at all. Since Mr. Yoo’s torture victims need only to be possessed of information that might save lives, they need not be criminals to suffer administration of pain to enhance their memory. Mr. Yoo’s analyses abrogate the need for probable cause when the Decider decides to lower the boom on terrorists. Mr. Yoo’s analyses also abrogates the concept that confessions are only admissible when “knowingly and voluntarily given,” as I was taught to apply in Criminal Procedure in law school, and again when I was a public prosecutor in Oregon, and again as a Federal Public Defender in the District of Oregon. If Mr. Yoo had tried to argue against these positions in open court, he would have been called an idiot, and derided by criminal practitioners of any experience. Instead, Mr. Yoo made these pronouncements in secret, to government bosses blinded by the lure of gaining the power that gangsters and thugs use to overpower their enemies, defiling these sacred legal traditions for the very purpose of creating an arguable legal shield for the vilest of human conduct – the deliberate infliction of pain to extort statements from the unwilling.

It cannot be necessary for me to push doggedly through every line of Rule 3-200 for you to see the fallacy of your argument. You know Mr. Yoo violated his professional ethics by becoming a mouthpiece for legal “doctrines” so far out of the mainstream that they could only be called delusional. You don’t try to deny that Mr. Yoo committed ethical misconduct, because you would be justly derided if you did.

So instead you resort to pettifoggery, the insertion of a restrictive clause in this sentence: “Was there clear professional misconduct - that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney - material to Professor Yoo's academic position?” You are tacitly arguing what is wrong as a matter of ethics law – that Mr. Yoo’s professional misconduct as a government lawyer is not “material” to Professor Yoo’s “academic position.” Any unethical act by an attorney bears on every aspect of their performance of professional duties. An attorney who breaches his professional duties is never exonerated, not by time, a change of job, or any other cosmetic alteration.

You can protect Mr. Yoo and his government salary for as long as you want. But one thing you won’t do is convince me that you have submitted his conduct to any type of serious scrutiny. Your excuses are as lacking in rigor as Yoo’s analyses, and you don’t even have the threat of terrorism to justify your sophistic dodges.

You have illuminated no point of academic freedom in your misnamed apologia for a torturer, and instead have made it clear that, for one reason or another, this miserable excuse for a lawyer is being coddled by the University of California. As a former UCLA alumnus, I will register my protest long and loud. And I am not alone. Protect your pet torturer if you will. Justice will find him at last.

The Dean's excuse-making is copied below:

The Torture Memos and Academic Freedom

Christopher Edley, Jr.

The Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Chair and Dean

UC Berkeley Law School

While serving in the Department of Justice, Professor John Yoo wrote memoranda that officials used as the legal basis for policies concerning detention and interrogation techniques in our efforts to combat terrorism. Both the subject and his reasoning are controversial, leading the New York Times (editorial, April 4), the National Lawyers' Guild, and hundreds of individuals from around the world to criticize or at least question Professor Yoo's continuing employment at U.C. Berkeley Law School. As dean, but speaking only for myself, I offer the following explanation, although with no expectation that it will be completely satisfying to anyone.

Professor Yoo began teaching at Berkeley Law in 1993, received tenure in 1999, and then took a leave of absence to work in the Bush Administration. He returned in 2004, and remains a very successful teacher and prolific (though often controversial) scholar. Because this is a public university, he enjoys not only security of employment and academic freedom, but also First Amendment and Due Process rights.

It seems we do need regular reminders: These protections, while not absolute, are nearly so because they are essential to the excellence of American universities and the progress of ideas. Indeed, in Berkeley's classrooms and courtyards our community argues about the legal and moral issues with the intensity and discipline these crucial issues deserve. Those who prefer to avoid these arguments - be they left or right or lazy - will not find Berkeley or any other truly great law school a wholly congenial place to study. For that we make no apology.

Did what Professor Yoo wrote while not at the University somehow place him beyond the pale of academic freedom today? Had this been merely some professor vigorously expounding controversial and even extreme views, we would be in a familiar drama with the usual stakes. Had that professor been on leave marching with Nazis in Skokie or advising communists during the McCarthy era, reasonable people would probably find that an easier case still. Here, additional things are obviously in play. Gravely so.

My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoo's analyses, including a great many of his colleagues at Berkeley. If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fire or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless.

There are important questions about the content of the Yoo memoranda, about tortured definitions of “torture”, about how he and his colleagues conceived their role as lawyers, and about whether and when the Commander in Chief is subject to domestic statutes and international law. We press our students to grapple with these matters, and in the legal literature Professor Yoo and his critics do battle. One can oppose and even condemn an idea, but I don't believe that in a university we can fearfully refuse to look at it. That would not be the best way to educate, nor a promising way to seek deeper understanding in a world of continual, strange revolutions.

There is more, however. Having worked in the White House under two presidents, I am exceptionally sensitive to the complex, ineffable boundary between policymaking and law-declaring. I know that Professor Yoo continues to believe his legal reasoning was sound, but I do not know whether he believes that the Department of Defense and CIA made political or moral mistakes in the way they exercised the discretion his memoranda purported to find available to them within the law. As critical as I am of his analyses, no argument about what he did or didn't facilitate, or about his special obligations as an attorney, makes his conduct morally equivalent to that of his nominal clients, Secretary Rumsfeld, et al., or comparable to the conduct of interrogators distant in time, rank and place. Yes, it does matter that Yoo was an adviser, but President Bush and his national security appointees were the deciders.

What troubles me substantively with the analyses in the memoranda is that they reduce the Rule of Law to the Reign of Politics. I believe there is much more to the separation of powers than the promise of ultimate remedies like the ballot box and impeachment, even in the case of a Commander in Chief during war. And I believe that the revolution in sensibilities after 9/11 demands greater, not reduced, vigilance for constitutional rights and safeguards. What of the argument made by so many critics that Professor Yoo was so wrong on these sensitive issues that it amounted to an ethical breach. It is true, I believe, that government lawyers have a larger, higher client than their political supervisors; there are circumstances when a fair reading of the law must - perhaps as an ethical matter? - provide a bulwark to political and bureaucratic discretion. And it shouldn't require a private plaintiff and a Supreme Court ruling to make it so. Few professions require an oath at entry, but law does. Oaths must mean something.

Assuming one believes as I do that Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service, that judgment alone would not warrant dismissal or even a potentially chilling inquiry. As a legal matter, the test here is the relevant excerpt from the “General University Policy Regarding Academic Appointees”, adopted for the 10-campus University of California by both the system-wide Academic Senate and the Board of Regents:

Types of unacceptable conduct: … Commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty. [Academic Personnel Manual sec. 015]

This very restrictive standard is binding on me as dean, but I will put aside that shield and state my independent and personal view of the matter. I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct - that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney - material to Professor Yoo's academic position? Did the writing of the memoranda, and his related conduct, violate a criminal or comparable statute?

Absent very substantial evidence on these questions, no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.

GENERALS PARROT BUSH WAR PROPAGANDA FOR MONEY AND INFLUENCE, by Charles Carreon

04/20/08:

On the front page of today's Sunday New York Times, there's a stunner article backed by 8,000 pages of documents extracted from the government by court order, that reveals the inner workings of a pro-war propaganda network that has blatantly targeted the American people as the victims of a disinformation campaign. The article indicts the usual suspects — the White House, the Dept of Defense, the media networks, and, somewhat of a shocker, those icons of martial legitimacy, the retired generals who claim to analyze military issues.

The article reveals that, as the centerpiece of what insiders including Rumsfeld called a “psyops war”, retired generals have been parroting the Bush line from their gilded perches as talking heads, helping sell the war initially, concealing the post-mission-accomplished spiral into chaos, and most recently, selling the wisdom of the “surge” to an American people bled sick from the costs of forcing our generosity on an armed people acting in defense of their homeland.

I'm fairly inured to the shock of betrayal, but this one seriously made me queasy. I went to military school in Virginia, and must admit that I assume the good faith of a military man, most times, speaking about the conduct of the war. On the other hand, you all know I'm a big hater, and finding someone to really hate these days isn't always easy. You keep coming up with the same people, and you can only hate them so much. But the generals are fresh meat. These dirtbags in uniform were incentivized with a lavish three-part perk-package of free travel, classified information, and “access,” i.e., influence over Dept of Defense contracting decisions, which the generals resold to their bosses, the military contractors, i.e., Dick Cheney's cadre of big eaters.

In the wake of this revelation, that was compelled by the NYT lawsuit and otherwise would've remained just a secret propaganda project, the media are certainly not apologizing. Fox news refuses to discuss the matter, and the rest have offered nothing but empty palaver. NPR is right in there with the other purported dupes who are shocked, shocked to discover that the generals would deviate from perpendicular truth in the performance of their sacred duties as impartial guides to the martial destiny of the nation. The truth is of course that it did not bother the propaganda grinders in TV newsrooms that the generals were reciting Bush-provided talking points because that is what everyone does.

The talking-head generals should be tried for treason. They have helped criminals who explicitly laugh at the Constitution as they plot to subvert the truth, as the NYT reports Rumsfeld did when one of the generals declared that they were simply doing “psyops,” psychological warfare, on the American public, prompting the retort from Rumsfeld, “You mean you don't believe in the Constitution?” Rumsfeld should go the penitentiary over that line. Rumsfeld, infected with arrogance, used an iron fist approach with his military minions, overruling even mild objections with a terse “get in line,” and adjourning quickly to provide the pet generals with treasured access to Rumsfeld's private souvenir vault. The details of the plan are copiously provided in the article, here at the American Buddha Online Library.

DON'T BE NEGATIVE -- TO WIN, JUST RUN AGAINST BUSH!, by Charles Carreon

04/29/08:

Loyal Bushies, This Is Not For You

The ideas stated in this article are strictly for people dedicated to eradicating the stain of Bushism from our national life. All you anti-terrorism fans, all you believers in the the Big Lie, tell yourself whatever you want, Bush's pants have been on fire so long, it's like he's being burned in effigy. The Democratic victory strategy set forth below is distilled from the pure essence of popular hatred for the demonstrably feeble-minded “war President.” Yes, it's true. Turn your eyes away in horror. I am yet another rabid, Bush-hating American, fueled with enough anger to burn out whole city blocks of lobbyists, along with all the bad legislation, corrupt policymaking, and obscene profits they've been racking up for the last eight years. Ignore my rantings, or you could end up the same way.

With This Election, We Save The Nation, The Planet, and Ourselves

Okay, Democrats, now that we're alone, let's pop that frigging champagne and get to work. We've absolutely got to win this election, or you can kiss polar bears, a livable planet, world peace, civil rights, and whatever's left of the social safety net goodbye. We've got to elect a Democrat and then follow through by riding his/her ass like Paul Revere rode his horse on the night the British landed — as if all our freedoms and hopes depended on it!

First We Define The Candidates Strategically

First, let's first define our candidates strategically, so we can think about the game. Obama's the youthful, multicultural, anti-Bush candidate, Hillary's the white anti-Bush candidate, and McCain is Bush III. Waiting in the wings, well-rested and supported by a wife with a will like a power press, is John Edwards, who is well able to mend fences, bond with the people, and be the booster rocket that will put either one of these candidates in the White House.

Second, We Back A Candidate Who Will Reverse Bush-Policies

If all of our candidates were on Our Team, then victory would be assured! In some dream-reality, Howard Dean would sit them all down together and help them iron out their differences. Howard isn't the man for that job, so let's have an alternative strategy, and let's not let the Doom-o-crats, the ostensibly earnest media liberals wailing that Democrats are “destroying themselves,” as if Obama were unraveling before our eyes, Hillary was morphing into the Wicked Witch, and hordes of flying monkeys were arriving to turn registered Democrats into McCain Republicans in all the swing states. Somehow I think Karl Rove is somewhere behind a curtain, pulling a lot of strings to keep this doomsaying spin aloft, turning a debate that needs to be focused on issues into a mere celebrity deathmatch.

The fallacy behind all of this personality campaigning is that one person really is dramatically better, in their very fiber, than another. This is an absolute fallacy, because it is the conditions that politicians are subject to, far more than their innate qualities, that shapes their acts of leadership. Jack Kennedy may have been a philanderer and a fan of methamphetamine, but he faced down the Russians. Harry Truman probably wasn't born wanting to incinerate two Japanese cities in the only two uses of thermonuclear weapons in human history, but he did it. Churchill might not have found a stage large enough for his ambition, but for Hitler's decision to bomb London night after night with rockets, buzz bombs, and Luftwaffe bombers. And if some very clever people hadn't brought down the three towers on September 11, 2001, the “Decider” would never have become a “war president,” and the Iraqis of Baghdad would have no bombs going off in their neighborhoods, and the economy would be in much better shape.

The Obama team has fallen hook, line and sinker for the idea that their guy is just the peachy President we need. Hillary fans are more likely to propose her as an issues-oriented politician, but the press puts the focus on her personality. Realism tells us that how each one would behave as President will depend on whether they staff their Cabinet and White House with cronies or change-agents, whether they can bring the economy back on line, whether Congress will roll back the Bush-era corruption or continue to marinate in corporate funds that dissolve their spines and cause them to creep like slugs toward whatever slime pool lobbyists are funding today. Rather than being focused on who we'll send to the White House, we need to know how to stay in touch with them once they're in there. What will it take for them to receive our calls? The answer is — whoever we send to the White House will remember us if we make it very clear to them why we're sending them there. The Decider knew why he was sent to the White House — he was sent there by his cronies to open the national treasure to plunder, and he has done it quite effectively. Similarly, we need to know, by the candidates' commitments, that they know why we're sending them to the White House — to put an end to Bush Policies and point the nation in a wholesome, honest direction. Guess what, that message is positive, and will even sell in church. Being against a bad man is not “negative.” It's called “wearing the white hat.” I want a candidate with a white hat, a real one, and I don't care about their hairdo or their skin color.

Our alternative to a strategy of “Put a Fabulous Person Up As Our Candidate” would be — put a candidate in office who is willing to put an end to Bush Policies in all the important areas. A candidate who will get us out of Iraq swiftly, tend to the ailing economy, end the attack on the environment, stop the corporate giveaways and tax breaks, and set the nation on the path to a sustainable, prosperous, peaceful future. A candidate who will bravely reject a foreign policy born of fear-mongering, productive of nothing but international contempt, security boondoggles, foreign wars, and the construction of walls in the slums of Baghdad, and the desert of Sonora. When our candidate's goals are clear, there are enough votes among the economically disenfranchised, among rejected minorities, among deprived groups like single mothers lacking daycare, healthcare, and decent food, to put that candidate over the top, regardless of her color or his sex. Our candidate will be flexible, will be adaptive, will be humble and will be dedicated.

Third, We Have A Plan To Win With Either Nominee

If the numbers are right, Obama partisans aren't converting any Hillary followers, and the reverse is equally true. Some Hillary voters say they'll vote for McCain if Obama wins. Some Obama voters may stay home if Hillary wins. These candidates are free to act however they want right now, but we, the Democratic party faithful who have waited for this chance to deliver a knockout punch to Bush policies, cannot accept a division of our voting power. Whoever comes out of the national convention can be the Candidate, as long as they look forward to a win in the general, and have a plan for how to include all the power players to the Rejection of Bush Policies Administration. Remember, this is not negative! It is the one plan that has majority support!

A majority of voters, asked to vote on each of the following issues, yes or no, would definitely answer no to all of them:

1. Should the next President continue to fund the War in Iraq to the tune of $40,000,000 (forty million dollars) per day?

2. Should the next President continue the policy of allowing the CIA to torture people in secret prisons?

3. Should the next President continue the policy of providing less funding to States for health care and children's health insurance?

4. Should the next President continue to appoint political cronies incapable of performing their jobs to head agencies like FEMA, the FDA, the the Dept of Education?

These and many other questions can be answered virtually in unison by Hillary and Barack. In fact, they should try it. People who want to move them in this direction should start asking these questions in the following format: “If you are elected President, do you pledge to end the military occupation of Iraq as quickly as is consistent with the protection of American troops?” Or, “If you are elected President, do you pledge to close all secret CIA prisons and Guantanamo, and give the people locked away there a free and open trial?” These questions are, of course, far too difficult for an unmotivated Hillary or Barack to say “yes” to. They would much prefer to finesse it, and play personalities. That way they think they'll have wiggle room once they get to the White House, and they'll just do things “their way.” But both Hillary and Barack are mistaken about this strategy. We can all see through it, except the true believers on either side, and we know that they're avoiding the hard questions because they believe the Doom-o-crats are right, and you just can't commit openly to rolling back the Bush Administration takeover of our government. Just can't do it. Like pod-people, Bushites will clone themselves, light torches, head to the polls, and burn unpatriotic Presidential candidates at the stake. Bullshit. That's fear mongering coming straight out of Karl Rove's Big Lie Emporium, and don't you believe it, sports fans. The only winning ticket is the one that says, “Screw Bush!”

Fourth, We Let The Voters Elect the Nominee Who Will Reverse Bush Policies

The standard strategy that the Doom-o-crats are laying out for themselves would be to lose the general election after lots of furious politicking. Eliminating internecine warfare seems like a good idea, but by trying to get Hillary to withdraw from the race, they make Obama look weak. Additionally, he's being encouraged to act peevish, which doesn't look good. Minority superdelegates are under pressure to make the politically correct choice, but we don't really know what that is. People who couldn't win the election for themselves, like Edwards, are sought for endorsements by either sides of the personality war. No wonder he's keeping mum. I'm sure he would love it if someone would ask him how the battle against Bush policies is going, and whether he has any plans to forward his initiatives with the new Democratic administration (whoever leads it). Keeping to Karl Rove's secret plan, the Doom-o-cratic convention, run machine-style, will produce the Chosen One that the charmless Dean machine will try and force everyone to support, using the argument that the candidate is at least better than McCain. (Note how much stronger it would be if the argument were, “Like both of the Democratic Presidential contestants, the nominee has pledged to roll back all corrupt Bush policies within a hundred days of their election.”)

Fifth, We Follow Through On Our Victory By Making The Next President The People's President

Rather than trying to force an early peace between Obama and Clinton, the Party leadership needs to commit to letting the popular result carry the convention, and accept the possibility that either of them may get the nomination, and commit to giving either nominee all the resources they need — to do what? Reverse Bush Policies! Yes, You've got it now. Just keep saying that. “I want the candidate elected who will Reverse Bush Policies!” You just do that, and I promise you, you'll get that candidate. Once you get the candidate, you'll have to work to elect them, and with Doom-o-crats everywhere crying despair, it will be work to get our anti-Bush candidate elected. We will do it, though, and when we do, the hard part really begins. However many times they took the pledge to Reverse Bush Policies, once they become President, they will want to forget. We must not let them forget. We must remind them every day why we put them in office, and demand that they make progress toward the goals they set for themselves when they reached for the nation's top executive office. Like I said, it's circumstances that make the politician. We can create the circumstances that will make the next President the People's President, and he or she will love us for it, because strong demands from the people empower populist politicians. And we could really use a genuine populist President. So let's stand up a President, arm them with our righteous rage, and march 'em off to Washington to make things right. And send the Doom-o-crats back to Oz, where they came from.